An ABC of Psychiatry is the result of the collaboration between the residents of La Fabrique du Pré, a psychiatric day center located in Nivelles, and the two founding members of the artistic collective No Sovereign Author. Their work is to collaborate as much as possible with the people they meet. So much so that there is no longer a “sovereign author”, since everyone participates in their own way in the creation of the image. They create a system, an organized space, with a framework and basic instructions, which makes this collaboration and co-construction possible.
Also a psychologist and occupational therapist for more than fifteen years, Pignot and Alvarez have organized creative workshops to try to offer answers to simple but no less essential questions: who are the holders of knowledge in matters of psychiatry? What use is made of this knowledge? What role does photography play in the (re)production of stereotypes of this knowledge?
Each original page of An ABC of Psychiatry is composed of a black and white photocopy of a double-page spread from the Dictionary of Psychiatry by French psychiatrist Jacques Postel, chosen by a resident, and additions made by him : inscriptions handwritten and/or images and texts cut out from the eight volumes of a 1968 encyclopedia with now obsolete content: Les clefs de la Connaissances.
The plates thus obtained constitute new interpretations of psychiatric terms often reserved only for mental health professionals. Allowing patients to say - and do - something of these signifiers found in the Dictionary is a way of hearing and giving a place to their knowledge.